The 2015 Chicago Marathon is over and I’m now back in New York preparing for the NYC Marathon on November 1st. Before turning my full attention to New York, I want to review and relive everything that got me to the starting line in Chicago beginning with my training.

To do that, I thought I would take a statistical look at how this training regimen compared to my first two attempts at 26.2 miles. I’ll only be examining a few criteria points – number of training runs, distance covered, time spent training and calories burned.

The first marathon I ran was the Lake Placid Marathon in June of 2014. Training for this race consisted of the following:

Count: 42 Activities

Distance: 314.08 mi

Time: 45:03:18 h:m:s

Calories: 35,442 C

I then ran the Empire State Marathon in October of 2014 as my second attempt at 26.2. Training for that race consisted of the following:

Count: 37 Activities

Distance: 258.58 mi

Time: 33:41:24 h:m:s

Calories: 29,009 C

And finally, my training for the 2015 Chicago Marathon:

Count: 103 Activities

Distance: 826.14 mi

Time: 109:02:58 h:m:s

Calories: 82,056 C

I decided to crunch some numbers. I compared my previous personal best (Lake Placid) training cycle to the recently completed Chicago training cycle. The difference is astonishing! While training for the Chicago Marathon, my:

Distance increased 263%

Number of runs increased 245%

Time spent training increased 242%

Calories burned increased 232%

The support and encouragement I received from my family made a huge impact on my training. I was able to complete over 90% of my planned training mileage. I had a few goals for this race and the first was to get to the starting line healthy. I’m happy to report that I accomplished that goal.